Inspired by the true story of a Cornish election in 1796 when, as the author shares in her introductory note, “Britain’s electoral arrangements were a shambles”, Leonora Nattrass’ Scarlet Town is a wildly entertaining murder mystery. Set in an age when estimates reckon a mere 5% of the population could vote, this dazzler reels with cut-throat corruption, ambition and suspicion, all wrapped up in a page-turner that evokes the rivalries between the blue silks of the Duke of Leeds and the scarlet red of their political opponents in vivid style.
The third novel in a sequence, Scarlet Town is thoroughly enjoyable in its own right, though I recommend going back to Back Drop and Blue Water to enjoy Laurence Jago’s earlier exploits. This third tale sees the disgraced former Foreign Office clerk and his journalist employer William Philpott in Laurence’s Cornish hometown.
Fresh from a locked room thriller aboard a transatlantic mail ship, the men's hopes for a period of recuperation are dashed when they find themselves thrust into a rowdy election. When one of two local men entitled to vote dies in decidedly suspicious circumstances, Laurence is asked to investigate. And then comes a second death…An absolute romp from start to finish, Scarlet Town is richly written, and entertaining with it.
** A TELEGRAPH BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR **
** SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA HISTORICAL DAGGER AWARD **
'Nattrass's best yet' - S.G. MACLEAN
'Wonderfully evocative' - DAILY TELEGRAPH
'Authentic and relentlessly pageturning' - SUNDAY EXPRESS
A rigged election. A feuding Cornish town. A suspicious death. And a perspicacious pig.
May 1796, and former Foreign Office clerk Laurence Jago and his larger-than-life employer, the journalist William Philpott, have escaped America - and Philpott's near imprisonment for libel - by the skin of their teeth. They return to Laurence's hometown of Helston, Cornwall, in the hope of rest and recuperation, but instead find themselves in the middle of a tumultuous election that has the inhabitants of the town at one another's throats.
Only two men may vote in this rotten borough, and when one of them dies in suspicious circumstances, Laurence is ordered to investigate on behalf of the town's political patron, his old master the Duke of Leeds. Then the second elector is poisoned and suspicion turns on the town doctor, the gentle Pythagoras Jago, Laurence's own cousin. Suddenly Laurence finds himself ensnared in generations of bad blood and petty rivalries, with his cousin's fate in his hands...
The new page-turning historical mystery from the author of Black Drop, a 2021 Times Book of the Year. Perfect for readers of Andrew Taylor and Laura Shepherd-Robinson.